Ground Operations
by Brochelle
Summary: This was the part he hated: the lull between fights. Granted, it was when his Spartans were safest, but it's when they were most on edge; when the silence proved too quiet, when the enemies proved too absent, when your footsteps on foreign turf were the loudest thing you heard. Series of Roland-centric one-shots.
1. Chapter 1

Roland really, _really _liked to help with ground operations.

_Even if_ he was just decoding transmissions (because Spartan Miller's infinitely inferior translating skills weren't worth a dime in the field). _Even if_ he was just tossing up waypoints for Crimson Team to chase, after chasing them himself through the delightfully complicated Forerunner portal systems. _Even if_ he was ordered off the communications channels for being _rude_. It was all worth it.

Ground ops were, ironically, where his skills were needed most. It was where there was a certain panic and frenzy in combat, this constant flurry fueled by _fight or_ _flight_, and everything needed to be immediate and precise.

It just so happened that Roland was both.

Really, when it came down to things, the fact of the matter was that piloting a starship could only be so exciting for a super-genius artificial intelligence. There were only so many systems to maintain, so many air vents to cycle, and so many people to talk to, especially on a ship populated mainly by Spartans, notorious already for being no better conversationalists than most soldiers. All they talked about was whose guns were bigger (referring to both the muscles _and_ the "things that go blam-blam", as DeMarco had corrected him once). No one ever wanted to know about how many Covenant systems he could decode in under thirty seconds (15) or even how quickly he could get from one side of the Infinity to the other (0.02 seconds).

But ground-side was where they clicked, though of course, being human, they were still slow, as only organics could be. _He _could think of a solution to a tactical hiccup within nanoseconds by _instantaneously _referring to a selection of strategies — all historically proven to succeed; he wasn't an idiot and neither were his programmers — and picking the ideal one based on the environment and the given variables. _They _would bicker and complain and fret even if the choice was obvious and spend precious, _boring _seconds questioning his data. _He _could have a weapons drop already hurtling through the stratosphere by the time _they _even thought to ask him for a resupply. And _he _could tell that the Hunters were there, lurking inside the snarl of hallways that honeycombed the Forerunner structure, and for once, _they _did too.

"Hunters, Crimson!" he exclaimed.

It was a programmed response; the red blips on the Spartans' motion trackers had already registered the aliens' presence just milliseconds prior. The spiking heart rates proved that his observation was void.

"Do we have any backup, Roland?" asked Crimson-2. "I thought we were supposed to get another Fireteam."

"Nope; _those_ guys got pulled to help clean out some caves up north. You guys are on your own." He hesitated. Purely theatrical, obviously, the solution had made itself obvious some two seconds prior. "I _can _organize some extra firepower, but you'll need to get out of this structure first to get to it. Can't punch through that special space metal - yet."

There was no reply, but he hadn't been expecting one. The Spartans turned to each other, speaking quietly, and within seconds they were retreating through the halls, back to the landing zone. Roland made the proper orders for a resupply — a couple rocket launchers, a DMR for the team leader, and maybe a sniper rifle to spice things up — and waited impatiently, watching the world through the Spartans' eyes.

This was the part he hated: the lull between fights. Granted, it was when his Spartans were safest, but it's when they were most on edge; when the silence proved too quiet, when the enemies proved too absent, when your footsteps on foreign turf were the loudest thing you heard. Had he been organic, the situation would have had him on edge. But he wasn't, so he was perfectly aware of how much he wasn't needed, rather than how scary a 100,000 year old catacomb could be. They were nervous, and rightfully so; the past couple days had taught all of them that the safest place was on the _Infinity_ — miles and miles from where Crimson Team was. And Roland couldn't do a thing about it except rush the weapons drop.

As they approached the front entrance of the facility, the doors slid closed and locked with a resounding bang. Heart rates stabbed through his readouts, and the team split, backing up against the doors. Locking into a textbook formation, the Spartans aimed their assorted weaponry down the hall. For several, agonizing seconds, they listened and breathed.

Fight or flight: utterly organic.

"_Calm down_, guys," Roland said, his voice smirking in the way only an A.I. could manage, "the can of worms haven't moved an inch."

The Spartans relaxed — fractionally.

"Roland, the doors?" said the team leader. Crimson-3 approached the massive doors, decked out in full Forerunner finery with glowing lights and iridescent metal and all, and knocked on it. The Spartan's fist against the metal produced the slightest whisper, but the door didn't budge.

"Sheesh. You guys are embarrassing me. It's just that button over there — _trust_ me."

The button was pushed, and the facility calmed, the door sliding open soundlessly. There were no slipspace anomalies, no sudden hulking Promethean Knight. Not even a Watcher.

The lights of the hallway spilled out over the tangled mess of flora beyond the facility, somehow making Requiem's nighttime expanse even more alien. Scattered across the courtyard - throwing long, arching shadows behind them - were multiple canisters, roughly the size of a Grunt and half-buried in the ground. From them protruded weapons of different types and sizes. The Spartans immediately gravitated toward their choice weapons —

— which Roland had picked intentionally, knowing which ones they liked.

Crimson-4 hefted a rocket launcher and sighted down the hulking tube for theatrical effect, then attached it to the magnetic nodes on the armor protecting her back. She patted it and whistled appreciatively.

"Thanks, Roland."

Roland was, for the longest of seconds, silent.

He could analyze voices, could dissect them and reveal their hidden intentions, within seconds. He could compare the tone of the Spartan's voice to hundreds of others on file to fully comprehend the phrase itself.

But he didn't bother.

"You're welcome, Spartan."

As the Spartans moved back into the Forerunner facility, he remembered how much he liked ground operations.


	2. Chapter 2

The first thing Roland does after they escape Requiem's clawing gravity well is visit Crimson Team.

Obviously, that isn't entirely true. Roland performed hundreds of other tasks before jumping and sidling through the _Infinity_'s network to reach the second medical bay on the fourteenth deck, Emergency Room A. For one, he had to readjust the _Infinity_'s trajectory out of slipspace - essentially an afterthought in the grand scheme of things; he had been more focused on maintaining power levels after the surprise jump (Captain Lasky would have given him a considerable amount of flack if Roland had, _god forbid,_ killed the oxygen flow in one of the compromised decks). Subroutines were dedicated to those minor details as he checked to make sure no pesky radiation was permeating the hull. Finding a pleasant lack of skin-boiling particles, he turned to more pressing matters.

Thousands of calculations and thousands of operations: all done on a separate level of consciousness. It was the transcended state of the average artificial intelligence, and mere idle hands to an A.I. like Roland. Tasks that could take weeks for a single human to perform took mere minutes for an A.I. of his stature; and it would appear as habitual as an inorganic, frontal lobe-lacking entity could manage.

Having ensured that the rest of the ship could handle itself for the next five minutes, Roland gathers himself in a holotank located in the E.R. that he had ordered Crimson to be taken to (granted, it isn't his entirety, because right now he's also speaking with Sarah Palmer, and then again he's chatting with maintenance about Grunts in the air shafts).

The time it takes him to get there implies he was worried (which he wasn't, he argued, as only organics got worried) because within seconds of the Spartans arriving, his little yellow hologram is projected by one of the Spartans' gurneys, and he's smiling.

Roland likes to joke with them, and saves all his best for the Spartans' company. He teases that he knew a few bruises wouldn't taken down _his_ Spartans. A few of them even grant him a courtesy laugh, but then they're focusing on each other and taking care of each other like the family they've trained to be.

Roland turns his attention to the Spartan who was hit particularly hard — by a flying, wayward boulder, in fact — and quickly accesses her medical file. He'd been all too aware of the sound of bone crunching when the boulder had made contact with her chest, but a quick review confirmed that a few broken ribs would be her only concern. Before he knows it, Roland is scanning all Spartans' files, reviewing the surgeon's notes, and hastily making altercations to inaccurate operation schematics. He reviews the emergency room's medical equipment and reboots the power cycles on a few of the machines, just to make sure they continue operating at optimum capacity (just to be safe).

Pleased that Crimson will be well cared for, Roland bids goodbye, insisting that he has other things to do. What Spartans don't nod simply wave at him, so he gives them a salute (genuine, this one, no click of the heels or even a sly wink either) before he's whisked away to "other things".

He doesn't mention to them that he can do hundreds of things at once, or that he's bumped them to the highest priority on the med bay surgeon's agenda, or that the gravity fluctuations back in the cave on Requiem really had gotten most of his attention. Because then it would have sounded like he was worried, and he hadn't been, of course.

(Only organics got worried).


End file.
